Like DIY or preparing a corpse for burial, if you don’t have the time to eat chocolate properly, it is better not to do it at all. You need a space in your day where you can linger over said chocolate and extract every last millisecond of pleasure from it. Sure, you can grab a bar on the run and enjoy it, at some level, but that in no way compares with eating chocolate in the ideal setting.
And what is that ideal setting? It involves sitting in your favourite armchair in winter, with the heating cranked up to tropical, a large cup of rust-coloured tea at your elbow, and [delete according to taste] the cat in your lap/5 Live burbling away in the background/Countdown on. This blissful “moment”, this hard-won time out from the real world, this precious inner flight can occur at any time of day, but it does require peaceful, focused concentration. Put your phone down. You need to be at one with the chocolate. You need to savour it. Plus, look, you’ve got really sticky fingers.
If chocolate is dumbing down, the gourmet interference is just as pernicious. Yes, you can put chilli, lavender and cranberries in chocolate. Possibly all at the same time. Yes, that is interesting, in an abstract way. And, yes, I would eat it (but, then, in desperate times, I have been known to eat a whole box of mint Matchmakers in lieu of “proper” chocolate). But is it an improvement on the original? No. The only thing chocolate needs filling with is more chocolate, hence the majesty of Lindt balls and their super-deluxe truffled centres.
I just had a whim. Full article here. It was so difficult to read it at work and try not tlo laugh out loud. Superb.
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